A Noteworthy Component for Agile Development

Question: Describe about pair programming a noteworthy component for agile development. Answer: Pair Programming emerges as the most prominent technique of agile software development that involves two distinctive programmers who work together on one single workstation. The programmer who works actively on the keyboard and writes code is generally regarded as the driver. While, the other programmer, namely the navigator or observer holds the responsibility of reviewing every code line that the driver types. It is obvious that two programmers may switch their roles on a frequent basis. When it comes to the origin of pair programming component in agile development, the names of several renowned personalities come up. They tried to create a distinctive necessity of pair programming amongst the programmers. These popular names include the anecdotes of Fred Brooks, John Von Neummann, Richard Gabriel, Jerry Weinberg and Edsger Dijkstra. They may sound fascinating to you, but at certain point of time, their anecdotes become difficult to substantiate. However, according to the verifiable sources, the modern concept of pair programming finds its existence prior to the great agile movement. In 1992, Larry Constantine coined the term Dynamic Duo for the first time while reporting his visit at Whitesmiths Inc. (A popular vendor of compiler initiated by P.J. Plauger, also an implementer of C). This component of agile software development is finding its extensive usage in the academic scenario. Major benefits and problems of pair programming Pair programming involves both benefits as well as problems for the programmers. Here are some of the crucial pros and cons of this component that include With two distinctive heads, the output may contain fewer bugs. However, it can only be possible if both the programmers have similar level of understanding among each other. You can expect better quality of coding and designing with two programmers. However, it may become difficult for you to justify your upfront costing of two people together. It is certainly the most brainstorming and creative component for agile development. Moreover, if there are individual style differences among the two programmers, it can lead to disasters as well. It also inculcates better debugging and testing for the programs but it becomes really a difficult task to find suitable partners for programming. Academic Case Study Being a significant part of extreme methodology of programming, most of the pair programming research has been conducted in academic digital learning environment. Here we site the study of University of California (Santa Cruz) that highlights positive outcomes on the usage of pair programming. According to their studies, the incorporation of pair programming in the digital learning environment of the schools can ideally help in retaining the interests of the students on the introductory courses of programming. In fact, the coding of pair programmers was observed to have better quality as compared to solo programmers. In addition to this, another research on larger students sample (comprising 555 students) indicates that higher numbers of students are retaining their interests in pair programming thereby presenting higher passing rates and course completion rates. References 2000 Bevan, L. Werner, and C. McDowell, "Guidelines for the User of Pair Programming in a Freshman Programming Class", Proceedings of Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training, Kentucky, pp.100-107, 2002. From https://www.msr-waypoint.net/pubs/75108/esem-begel-2008.pdf2000 McDowell, L. Werner, H. Bullock, and J. Fernald, "The Effect of Pair Programming on Performance in an Introductory Programming Course", Proceedings of ACM Special Interest Group of Computer Science Educators, Covington, KY, pp. 38-42, 2002. From https://www.msr-waypoint.net/pubs/75108/esem-begel-2008.pdf